Integrated circuit components are electrically coupled to conductive features of electronic devices in which the components operate, for example, a circuit board or other conductive feature. Coupling of components to associated electronic devices often requires the formation of multiple bonds arranged according to the electrical designs of the components and the devices. For example, a ball grid array may have multiple solder or other conductive balls to interconnect the component to the device. The speed at which ball grid arrays can be properly formed and coupled to the associated devices significantly affects the speed, productivity, and overall efficiency of device fabrication.
As the electronics industry continues its intensive pursuit of reduced manufacturing costs and increased speed, precision, and productivity in device fabrication, forming ball grid arrays in an efficient and reliable manner has become increasingly important to replace conventional quad flat pack (QFP) and other packaging technology. In a known technique for forming a ball grid array, individual balls of solder are pre-formed in a separate process, arranged according to the design of an associated component, positioned relative to the component, and then transferred to the surface of the component, which may have been pre-coated with a low temperature solder paste or flux. Such ball attachment techniques are often complex and present difficult size uniformity, quality uniformity, and other quality control problems. For example, such techniques often do not adequately control ball height or cannot form balls of appropriate height for particular applications. Moreover, these techniques do not provide the combination of speed, reliability, flexibility, and productivity that is increasingly required. Furthermore, the deficiencies of such techniques are amplified as pin counts increase and pitches become finer in an effort to increase chip density without sacrificing performance. As a result, previous techniques for coupling components to electronic devices have been inadequate for many applications.